Pickled Radishes
by x.Vivace
Summary: Inuyasha dropped his dinner and tensed up for the command to be spoken. The look of horror on his face was worse than anything, because she realized he was afraid of her. He was tensed up at her like she was the enemy, and suddenly she felt like she was rubbing his face in a mess on the carpet. (Oneshot about the beads of subjugation, T for language only, slight InuKag fluff.)


**A/N: I've currently hit a teensy bit of block with my very first novel, so I thought maybe taking a trip back to my roots and writing a fanfiction might help. I do have a lot of Inuyasha oneshots in mind I want to write, but I haven't finished the Final Act yet, so I don't want to risk writing about anything that was already addressed in the show. But this one...I just couldn't resist.**

 **Enjoy!**

 **..**

"Would you just sit down and eat!" Kagome found the words blurting out before she could even think about it, and Inuyasha's face was planted in the grass at her feet.

"Hey!" The muffled cry came from the half-demon's lips, barely escaping from a mouth full of dirt. "Can you be any more careless? Seriously!"

Her previous annoyance was shoved aside by a kick of humor. The dark-haired teenager put a hand over her mouth, half out of remorse and half to hide her twitch of a smirk. She'd meant only to ask him to join the rest of them with eating dinner, but Inuyasha was ever the high-energy one.

"All I ask is that you eat something. There's no sense getting all fidgety about Naraku if you don't have the strength to fight him when it comes down to it," She reasoned. Kagome heard the agreeing chimes of their travel companions, but Inuyasha seemed to be completely oblivious.

"I'll eat later. I just want to look around the area one more time for Naraku's scent," he proclaimed before wiping his face clean of dirt and jumping off into the trees surrounding them.

Kagome let out a deep sigh and met Sango's eyes. She was the only other woman in the group; surely she understood the day-to-day struggle of caring too much for an impulsive man. "He's hopeless."

The older woman's brown eyes were rich with sympathy. "Maybe not. Why don't you go after him and take him a rice ball?"

Kagome nodded and gathered up some food, focusing on the items with pickled radishes. They were his favorite, for some ungodly reason. Even her mother had cringed when she'd asked her to prepare an extra serving of them. With the meal in her arms and packed back into one of her mom's bento boxes, she set out after Inuyasha. He wouldn't be too hard to find, because normally when he left to pout, he would just find somewhere high up and watch the sky.

With that thought, Kagome looked up at the setting sun, the colors mixing like spilled paint. She thought of Inuyasha and how frustrated he must be with her sit commands. She didn't use them nearly as much as in the beginning, but she wasn't sure if that meant she cared more about his pride and comfort, or if she was angry with him less. After remembering she was chasing after him because of his impulsive fidgeting, she thought maybe it wasn't the latter.

But still, she did care a lot about him; definitely more than she'd readily admit. Her mind flashed to their first and only kiss, back in the castle of the creepy mirror witch. The rumble she felt in her stomach was bred of hormones and teenage uncertainty. Neither of them had talked about that kiss other than when Miroku brought it up as they were leaving the castle, when Inuyasha had claimed he hadn't wanted it.

Her stomach lurched with something else entirely.

"If it was so bad, then why did it make you stop transforming, huh? Why did you return it once you were yourself again?" Kagome grumbled, crossing her arms and holding the bento box close to her chest.

"Kagome? What are you crying about down there?"

The voice was familiar, and she looked up to meet two amber eyes that were set aglow by the dimming light. Inuyasha was sat high in an old tree, poised to pounce on all fours.

Kagome knew he was expecting a response to his question, but she didn't want to admit the direction her thoughts had been headed in. She held up the black lunch box. "I brought you something to eat, Inuyasha."

He sniffed the air a few times before effortlessly dancing from limb to limb to the bottom of the tree. "Thanks. I guess I am a little hungry."

Kagome rolled her eyes and gave him the box. "I know. Can we sit somewhere?"

He nodded, and led her to a place he claimed to have seen from his perch on the tree. It was a flat rock that overlooked a river and had a clear view of the sunset before them. The thought that Inuyasha would want to take her to a place like that made Kagome blush as he helped her up onto the makeshift seat.

"So why'd ya come after me?" Asked the dog-demon as he took a bite of a rice ball with a pickled radish embedded in the back.

"I wanted to say I'm sorry. You know, for the command…" Kagome did a pirouette around the enchanted word. The last thing she wanted was to make the same mistake a second time.

"Why? It's not like you don't do it every chance you get." Inuyasha deadpanned, blunt as ever.

She felt her face heat from anger and balled her fists at him. "I do not! I really only do it when you say stupid things. Speaking of…"

Inuyasha dropped his dinner and tensed up for the command to be spoken. The look of horror on his face was worse than anything, because she realized he was afraid of her. He was tensed up at her like she was the enemy, and suddenly she felt like she was rubbing his face in a mess on the carpet.

"I'm not going to say it."

Inuyasha blinked curiously at her, and let his arms fall back into a relaxed state. "Then don't throw it out there. That shit hurts, ya know."

Kagome nodded, looking down with dejection.

"Hey, what is it, Kagome? It doesn't hurt _that_ bad," Inuyasha said, his attention once again taken from his meal.

"Well, it's just…" Kagome looked up and met his eyes, and hers were set with intensity. "Do we really need those beads anymore? The beads of subjugation; they were intended to keep me safe, but I don't feel unsafe around you anymore."

Inuyasha cocked his head, his ears wiggling once. She imagined if he had a tail, it would have been wagging with excitement.

"So you want to take them off me?"

Kagome nodded. "I think I should. We don't need them anymore."

"Well what are you waiting for?" Inuyasha agreed. Behind him, the sun was a myth that had given way to a full moon. With the beautiful sight of the sky and how Inuyasha's yellow eyes caught the moonlight like a wolf's, Kagome placed her hands on the beads and lifted, and then maneuvered them around his hair. They were soon in her hands, and both of them stared with wonder.

"There." Kagome chorused. "Feel better?"

"I feel _way_ better. I feel a hundred pounds lighter," Inuyasha chuckled, and there was a deepness to it that made Kagome's muscles tense. "Now give me the shards."

"What!?" Kagome threw her hand to her bust, where beneath her shirt a glass jar around her neck held three shards of the Shikon jewel.

Inuyasha flexed his dominant claw and stood up. His knees were at her eye level, so she was forced to look up to meet those eyes she was admiring just moments before. Now, there were cast in stone, just like her heart.

"Inuyasha,please."

Those words were the last she could speak before she was airborne, tossed over his shoulder like a child. The beads of subjugation flew out of her hand and clattered against the rock they had been seated on. For the first time ever, she felt unsafe while he held her. For the first time ever, she beat her fists against his back and cursed her stupidity for not bringing her arrows. Even if she had, she really doubted she would have been able to use them against _him_.

After all, she loved him. With all her heart, she loved the man who was taking advantage of her weakness for him.

"Put. Me. Down! Inuyasha! Put me down!" She called, hitting him harder and harder. As he always pointed out, his body was made much tougher than a human's; he probably didn't even feel her struggling.

"Fine. Here ya go," He said, dropping her roughly in a fluffy patch of moss. Next to her, barely a meter away was a much rougher spot on the ground that was littered with rocks. She wondered why, if his intention was to take the shards, he would have treated her so gently.

Before she could ponder it more, a hot weight was above her. Inuyasha's body was now pinning her against the ground, one of his hands holding both of hers against the itchy moss above her head. Even though she knew it was an inappropriate reaction, her hormones kicked in and began a party in her stomach. She blushed deep red.

"Kagome, you made a bad choice," spat the dog-demon, swiftly reaching under her shirt with his free hand. It didn't linger, and he tugged the jar quickly so that the string snapped. Inuyasha held the mystically glowing shards in front of her face and swung them back and forth.

She watched them, and couldn't help the tears that formed behind her lids. The situation they were in was not how she'd imagined her decision to free him would have gone. She thought their bond was stronger than that; stronger than the evil that tainted the shards and sang to the darkest part of a person.

"I may have made a bad choice, but it isn't nearly as bad as the one you're making." She knew it was risky and stupid to taunt him, but she couldn't help it. Her anger always did end up getting the best of her.

"And here is where I kill you, if not only to shut you up." Inuyasha bared his fangs and sank his head to her throat. Kagome closed her eyes and angled her face away.

"You're practically begging for me to kill you." He eyed her exposed throat and let out a nasty snarl. The weight on top of her dissipated. "You're lucky I'm not that kind of man."

"What?" Kagome opened her eyes. The handsome sight of Inuyasha highlighted by the moonlight greeted her. His hand was extended to take hers and help her up, the other gripping the pink light that was her jewel shards. She accepted his hand, wearily, and turned on him with an angry expression.

"Inuyasha! Sit!" When nothing came of the command, and Inuyasha gave her a victorious grin, her glare darkened, even more deadly than before. Kagome stomped toward him, hands on her hips and her skirt pouncing with each step. "What the hell is wrong with you? Why did you take the shards?"

"Here." He tossed the jar, string and all, and she had to stumble to catch them.

"But…"

Inuyasha crossed his arms and turned away from her. "Look, Kagome, I was trying to prove a point."

"That you're an unpredictable jerk? I think we all knew that already."

He ignored her grumbled insult and continued. "I was trying to show you that the beads are annoying and completely uncalled for, yeah, but they also protect you from…"

From the way his voice trailed off, Kagome knew that he was referring to his full demon form. That version of him was bloodthirsty and it had no preference in taste. She looked to her uniform shoes and studied the saddle leather. "I understand."

"My demon self would do it...kill you I mean. And it would be really easy." Inuyasha had finally twisted to look back at her, his honey eyes burning into her heart. She studied his features; the dark eyebrows that gave him a husky-like permanent scowl, the little fangs that hung beneath his upper lip when he talked. She could tell in his sunken stature and the defeated look on his face that he was scared of himself as a demon, which was a long stretch in the right direction from when she first met him.

Kagome shook her head to kill the silence that had befallen them. "No, I don't think so. The beads are handy for that kind of thing, I guess, but we don't need them."

"What makes you say that?" Inuyasha asked, now fully facing her. He didn't pull away when she stepped closer toward him; in fact, he dropped his crossed arms almost like an invitation for her to come even nearer.

"You have this," she said, and placed a hand on his chest. She could feel his heart beating through the deceivingly soft red robe, but it wasn't strong enough. She slid her fingers through the slit that crossed over his torso and let her hand find heat. His skin was rough from poor care, and the invisible hairs on his chest were curly and tickled her finger tips. "You have a big, human heart."

"Kagome…" He said in a whisper, then placed his hand over hers. "My feelings make no difference to that part of me and you know it."

"Well I have a memory that _begs_ to differ."

The simple sentence set Inuyasha's face aglow with a pink blush, and he looked away to something uninteresting just to break their eye contact. "I don't think that counts."

"Why, because you weren't fully transformed? Then what about the time I hugged you and you went back to normal?" Kagome tugged her hand from beneath his clothes and placed them both on his shoulders. "We're connected, Inuyasha. You get to save me every day, why can't I just save you once?"

"You pulled the arrow out of my chest when I was pinned to the sacred tree."

Kagome adopted her most obnoxious impersonation voice and retorted, " _That doesn't count_."

Inuyasha couldn't hide the humored snort that came from him. "You're such an idiot mortal, ya know that?"

"Yeah, maybe." Kagome chewed on her next words, considering the consequences of saying them out loud. She took the risk. "But I have a really strong feeling you still love me anyway."

Both of them were blushing now, but the eye contact wasn't broken this time. A silence fell between them in which they shared a heated gaze. Inuyasha's hands had found their way to Kagome's hips, and the touch made her hormones go wild. Her heart was playing the xylophone with her ribcage. Their faces were inching closer, very slowly. She thought of him pinning her down again, but this time with different intentions, and her already hot blush spread down her neck.

"Inuyasha," she whispered, before allowing him to press his lips against her own. They were warm like his chest had been, and the chapped skin that tickled her lips was characteristic of him; she wouldn't have had it any other way. They kissed slowly for a while, until they both needed to pull away to breathe.

Kagome looked down when they separated, because his eyes were scanning her face incredulously, like he couldn't believe what had just occurred. She couldn't help but admit to herself that that was the most romantic thing she'd ever done or felt, too, even counting all the times Koga gripped her hands between his own, and when Hojo's ancestor proclaimed his love for her so openly.

She wanted to tell him; she wanted Inuyasha to know how much he meant to her, but something inside her told her he already did. In the way his hands lingered around her waist, and the way he so gently tied the jewel shard back around her neck for her. It was in how he carried her on his back back to the rock where his dinner sat cold, and the beads lie, abandoned.

Their bond was apparent in every swing of the Tessaiga, every barrier he broke, every arrow she shot and every wound they received on the hunt for Naraku or whoever else attempted to hinder their quest.

Everything they did, Kagome realized while placing the beads back over Inuyasha's head, was for one another and their journey together.

Even the pickled radishes.

 **..**


End file.
